Customer Reviews

The Denver Mint: 100 Years of Gangsters, Gold, and Ghosts

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A very entertaining book. Not a boring list of facts and dates and metalurgical formulas, but a collection of interesting stories surrounding the money factory of downtown Denver. Like the title says, from gangsters-a frozen corpse in the getaway car, to ghosts on the dreaded third floor, to the gold provide a great bunch of anecdotes. I especially enjoyed the interview with the sculptor of the Sacajawea dollar coin. Certainly a must for any Denverite, and a good read for anyone who cares about money!

This is a fun, insightful read. I enjoy my history with a dose of humor, and this book provided just that. It made me feel connected to the coins I use daily and have taken for granted and gave me an insiders view of the happenings at the Mint.

I thought this was an informative and fun read. The authors did a great job of presenting the subject in a fresh and entertaining manner. While I suspect that the information on the coins is fairly basic from a serious numismatist's point of view, as a casual collector, I found it very useful. The book is loaded with colorful historical information on The Denver Mint.

I ordered this book expecting a book about the history of and full of stories about the Denver Mint. There was some of that, and that content was excellent. But there was quite a bit of general coin history and information that was not specific to the Denver Mint. Also there seemed to be a lot of filler - there are recipies, there are full-page pictures of coins that are not specific to the Denver Mint, and the endnotes were printed in the same large type as the rest of the book(in a majority of other books, end-notes are in small, closely spaced print). Overall the interesting material in this book directly relevant to the hisotry of the Denver Mint would have made a solid, interesting booklet. Attempting to stretch this material into a 173 page book did disservice to the interesting data on the Denver Mint that got lost among the clutter / filler.

My father introduced me to coin collecting. As a young Denver native I was amazed we had a mint and wanted to learn more. However school tours were short and there just wasn't that much information. Through this book I finally learned about the history, on-going activites and even the architecture, plus a few choice tidbits about our fair city. Also it brought back happy memories of looking at coins with my Dad. Definitely a must read for anybody interested in historic Denver.

This book has a very high concentration of "fluff," that is, stuff not related to the book's title--cooking recipies with numismatic names, general beginner coin collector information, and other non-Denver history. This book purports to be a regional history, but is not. Even the coin photos are not of Denver Mint coins! The title is quite misleading and the book is disappointing. Soft cover, printed in USA.